Xexex

Xexex

North American Name

Orius

Release date

JPN 1991

Developer

Konami

Publisher

Konami

Designer

Motoaki Furukawa Sakoto Miyawaki

Platforms

Arcade, PSP

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Xexex (released in North America as Orius) is a 1991 side-scrolling shoot 'em up arcade game by Konami. It draws on R-Type and Gradius, adding tentacle mechanics. Xexex was also noted for not having but deserving a console port, but this changed when it was included in the Salamander Portable compilation pack for the PSP released in January 25, 2007.

Contents

Gameplay

The game is unusual for different gameplay mechanics between the original Japanese release and the overseas releases.

Xexex plays almost like R-Type in the sense that you have many enemies attempting to destroy you and you need to properly use the Flint in order to survive. The Flint is not like the Force though as you cannot connect it to the rear of the Flintlock. Instead, upon releasing it, the Flint will slowly home in on the closest enemy and attempt to connect to it upon which the enemy will be damaged. The Flint will also unleash its tentacles, which will block enemy fire.

Overseas Differences

The overseas version Orius

The Flint is slightly smaller (and blue).

The weapons have been changed completely. There are only two available, a spread shot which looks similar to the Photon Shot, and homing missiles. Both are upgradable.

Some of the bosses have been modified, the most notable one being the stage 5 and 6 bosses. For the stage 5 boss, it is now very difficult to get past it's defenses. For the stage 6 boss, there are now two satellites as opposed to one.

The ship now has a energy bar as opposed to being a one-hit wonder, with energy recharge powerups available. However, there are no lives so one bar is one credit.

Upon dying, the player starts where they died instead of going back to a checkpoint.

The game is now simultaneous two player. The 2nd player ship is a modified version of the Flintlock.

The stage intros note different planet names instead of saying "Charge the enemy".

All text is in English as opposed to just the ship stats screens.

Main Weapons

Note: This weapons are not present in the overseas versions.

Proton Laser: Your initial weapon. Picking up one of six powerups gives you the following:

Homing Laser: a 3-way laser with weak "bending" homing for top and bottom lasers

Search Laser: a laser with strong homing that travels in square trajectories

Ground Laser: your main gun is changed to an upgraded Proton Laser while a laser beam travels across the floor (similar to the R-Type weapon)

The name of the current weapon is displayed at the bottom of the screen (not in the overseas version, of course)

Story

The Flintlock feels almost like a souped up R-9 due to the Flint pod and it's wide variety of weapons available

Once again space-bound humanity finds itself in trouble. Princess Irene La Tias of Planet E-Square has been kidnapped by the flamboyant, androgynous evil galactic overlord Klaus Pachel Bell, and the last hope in rescuing her and pushing back his army of bio-cybernetic war machines lies in the experimental fighter Flintlock, a spacecraft developed from a recently discovered, mysterious life form, the Flint. In the ending, the Flintlock sends the orb back through the atmosphere of the planet, where it morphs into a naked fairy for some reason, and saves planet E-Square.

Trivia

Konami released two Yu-Gi-Oh cards, Flint and Flint Lock, as a reference to this game.

Many of the enemies seem to be controlled by pink blobs.

In another Konami game, Ganbare Goemon 2, a minigame of Stage 2 can be played for 100 gold, similar to how Gradius could be played in Legend of the Mystical Ninja.

It took 16 years for Xexex to get a home port. One reviewer thought because the graphics were too advanced to be ported to the Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo or any home consoles at the time without downgrading them, or wait 3 years for the Sony Playstation or the Sega Saturn to create an arcade-accurate port.

In Otomedius Gorgeous, Diol Twee's ship is the Serenity Viper, which is based on the Flintlock. Also, Twee's DLC BGMs are remixed themes of Xexex, like "Breeze", "Battle Cry" or "Happy Daymare".